There isn't anything that you can add to the car that will make it more reliable.

There are some people who are on the catch can/aos bandwagon and at one time I agreed. Over time the results were not really advantageous to daily drivers. The carbon buildup still existed and needed to be dealt with.

The best things you can do is keep maintenance up to date, use good tires, use quality brake pads and rotors, stick to dry paper filters with better filtration, and don't beat on the car. That's with any vehicle though

 

🤙🏻 Thanks again man much appreciated

 

Well for one... don't slap parts on the car that aren't compatible with the ECU's state of tune.

You should probably start with that....

 

Your car will never be as reliable as it was from the factory. This is the case with almost all vehicles. I don't blame you for playing the stupid game, just be prepared to win stupid prizes.

Side story: The only time I can remember modifying a vehicle to make it more reliable than it was from the factory was with my 2003 Nissan Sentra SER Spec V. (fun car) It had a precatalytic converter in the exhaust manifold. The engine would love to suck up bits of it. You either had to get a header, which most of us did, or knock out all of the shit in the precat. The header install was a bitch, requiring the removal of a couple pulleys and part of the subframe.

There were also butterfly screws in the secondary runners in the intake manifold. (knockoff VTEC where the runners would open up at a later RPM) They had a nasty tendency to get sucked into the motor. The relatively easy fix was to open the manifold and loctite them. There were quite a few owners who found screws missing when they went to do the fix.

This was the consequence of a Japanese car designed in America and assembled as cheaply as possible in Mexico.

I digress...

Wasn't there an issue with catalytic converter placement on the early model WRX's?

 

Wasn't there an issue with catalytic converter placement on the early model WRX's?

Catalyst in up-pipe between engine & turbo. Apparently bits would break & grenade turbo. Never seen one. Now that I think about it, I've never seen an unmodified GD or GR IRL.

Agree with everyone else about maintenance. The only thing I would say is, do a bit more than the manual calls for.

• Subaru top engine cleaner, air filters and hvac cleaner once a year/15k miles or so.
• Spark plugs, serpentine belt, fuel strainer and pcv valve at 50k miles.
• Bleed brakes & clutch at least every 2 years. Refill battery with distilled water. The stock panasonic battery has screw caps on each cell.

 

Stock for best reliability. The Subaru engineers aren’t sitting around puzzled, wondering how tuners are making more power.